It is known to drive a steering wheel from e.g. an automatic pilot by means of a belt passing round a pulley connected coaxially to the wheel and around a drive pulley driven by the motor of the automatic pilot, which is mounted on some fixed object adjacent the wheel e.g. a bulkhead or the steering column.
This system has the disadvantage that it is essentially not selfcontained, the driven pulley and belt being separate from the driving components.